Minicase 2 Implementing SAP R/3 at the University of Nebraska

Questions 1:Which of the four options or combination of options would you recommend to
project management and the steering committee? What are the risks involved in your
recommendation? How would you manage the risks?
Answer 1: Buckler should adopt the most conservative and risk aware approach. All of us know
Murphy’s law:“If something can go wrong, it will”, and at the most inconvenient time.

OPTION 1:Use SAP to develop solutions for all the identified shortcomings is the least risky
choice.Appraently,SAP has agreed to incorporate the solutions developed into the next
release of SAP R/3.
OPTION 2:Using IBM as described is high risk, high hassle, high cost. This is a last resort
solution.
OPTION 3:It's highly unlikely that all the identified shortcomings are already planned by
SAP for the next release of SAP R/3.
OPTION 4:Delaying the HR part of the SAP R/3 of the system implementation will merit
consideration if Opetion 1 is a non-starter.

Questions 2: Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of a purchased system that forces
different organizational units to change their business processes and policies to conform to
the new system. Identify situations where this standardization would be desirable, and other
situations where it would be undesirable.
Answer 2: The advantage of implementing a software package is forced standardization. The same
process will be performed the same way at different locations and departments of the university.
This approach tends to reduce cost and improve quality.

The disadvantage of implementing a software package is reduced flexibility and often

reduced responsiveness when real changes occur in the organizaiton.

Questions 3: Can you think of circumstances where a company might want to install an
enterprise management system, such as SAP R/3, even though it appears that this would be
significantly more expensive than developing a comparable system in-house? Discuss.
Answer 3: In-house development of an enterprise-wide system is a very big project. It will
take a long time, consume a large number of resources and encounter many risks and
setbacks. Such a custom system seldom performs as initially planned. Furthermore, ERP
systems are frequently built to provide benefit to many stakeholders including suppliers,
customers, banks. Building an ERP system in-house will make it difficult to
share/interconnect with other stakeholders. Therein is much of the benefit, anyway. Clients
may require us to operate an ERP systemso that they can access it, or at least so they can
interact with it. SAP, Peoplesoft, Oracle and other major ERPsystems can be interconnected.
Can the in-house ERP system handle the required interconnections?
If someone makes the proposal that it will be cheaper to build than to licens from SAP or one
of its competitors, that proposal has likely omitted various real costs that development project
will encounter.

Questions 4: Go to the site at sap.com. Follow the links on the page to look at the features of
some cross-industry solutions. Prepare a report on the capabilities of the SAP solutions.
Answer 4: